These poems address the past and the now. For me that's about it… - Jim Dine Few
contemporary artists can demonstrate an œuvre as varied consistent and influential as that of
Jim Dine—incorporating painting drawing printmaking sculpture and photography and sweeping
across more than six decades. Fewer still can say they are respected poets. Dine has been
writing and performing intensely autobiographical poems since the late 1960s and With Fragile
Spirit is his latest collection consisting of five volumes. These differ greatly and include
"A Beautiful Day " exploring Dine's polarities of experience from delight to melancholy from
disillusion to celebration and "Like the Big Boy Tomato " a hand-written version of his 2021
hate poem "Electrolyte in Blue " probing themes of anti-Semitism racism climate change and
failed world leaders. Together these books affirm poetry as the unceasing critical flow that
augments and energizes his visual work.
